Vigil

by Robert Masello

  Every hour or so, Carter called the transport office at Kennedy Airport for an update, and after returning from a quick food run to the corner deli, he was told the office had called while he was out. “It is on the ground,” Russo said, as Carter brushed the rain—it had already started to drizzle—from his jacket. “It will be here in perhaps one hour.”

  Carter could hardly contain his excitement, but Russo, he noticed, was curiously dispassionate. He unwrapped the roast beef sandwich and Coke that Carter had picked up for him, and kept his eyes glued to the TV screen. Maybe that’s what came from living with the fossil for so long already, Carter thought. The thrill had worn off.

  That, or nervous exhaustion had taken its toll.

  Neither one of them had said much about the goings-on the night before—Carter had purposely downplayed it—but if this was how Russo had been living for the past few weeks, Carter could see why he looked so tired and distracted. And as for that crucifix above the sofa . . . well, Russo wouldn’t be the first scientist in Carter’s experience to secretly harbor a belief system that harmonized poorly with the empirical nature of his—of their—calling.

  When the truck did arrive at the bio building, exactly two hours later, Carter heard it backing up in the loading zone outside before the driver had even rung the delivery bell. Like a kid on Christmas morning, Carter leapt up from his chair and fumbled with the keys at the padlocked doors. By the time he’d finally gotten the locks undone, the driver had hit the delivery bell and a loud clanging echoed around the chamber. Russo stuck his fingers in his ears while Carter slapped the red button that triggered the electric release. The loading doors retracted slowly, with a high-pitched whine that added to the cacophony.

  Night had fallen, and the loading zone outside was illuminated now by the blazing red taillights of the truck and the baleful yellow glare of the halogen streetlamps. A cold wind was blowing, blowing so hard in fact that the streetlamps were swaying, throwing their light in moving shadows around the wet, black asphalt. A heavy rain was coming down at a slant, drumming hard on the roof of the truck and gurgling down the gutters.

  Carter stood in the doorway, getting wet all over again, but he didn’t care. He only wanted to see the fossil. Two workers were already putting down a ramp from the back of the truck to the ground. But so far, all that Carter could see huddled inside the truck was a huge, black block. It appeared to be secured there in sheets of heavy-duty plastic, broad strips of bright yellow tape, and several loops of thick, silver chain. And it looked like it was slightly raised on a platform of some kind.

  A small man in a brown military uniform sprinted out of the cab of the truck and ran into the building. He was wearing a cap with an insignia of his rank, and as soon as he was under the roof of the makeshift lab, he whipped the cap off and knocked the rainwater from its gleaming black visor.

  “Professore Cox?” he said to Carter, with a heavy accent.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  The man’s eyes were small and dark as pebbles, and they darted around the room as he spoke. “I am Lieutenant DiPalma. I am in charge of the cargo. I can only release this cargo to you.”

  “Great. Then we’re done. I accept it.”

  “It is not so simple. I must first see your copy of the international transport papers. You have them with you, yes?”

  “Oh, right. I do.” Carter turned to get them—but Russo was already bringing them over from the desk. “This is Professor Russo,” Carter said, “the man who—”

  “I know who the Professore is,” DiPalma interrupted, taking the papers and starting to look them over. “Non vedo l’ora di lasciare questi problemi nelle tue mani,” he rattled off to Russo.

  “Perché?”

  “Da quando ho preso controllo di questo, è stato un problema dopo l’altro. Un soldato è rimasto gravemente ferito caricandola a Frascati. Abbiamo avuto mal tempo per il viaggio intero. Abbiamo dovuto fermarsi a Halifax per rifornirsi di carburante.” He flipped another page, hastily initialed it.

  Carter, unable to keep up with the rapid-fire Italian, looked over at Russo, who nodded, and muttered to him, “Problems. A bad storm all the way over.” He said it as if he had expected no less. “And engine trouble.”

  “Is that why I thought I heard him mention Halifax?”

  “Yes. They had to go there for more fuel.”

  “I’m glad that’s all it was.”

  “Not all.” Russo gave him a level look, then said, “A soldier in Frascati was badly injured. Loading the stone.”

  Carter was starting to be grateful the fossil had arrived at all. He shook his head. “Didn’t you tell me that some guy, on his honeymoon . . .”

  “Yes, he died. In the cave.”

  “Wow,” Carter said. “It’s as if the thing had a curse on it.”

  Russo swiftly looked away, as the teamsters working this job attached a couple of heavy chains to the block of stone and its platform; the chains were then hooked to what looked like an electric winch in the truck’s rear cargo area—in order, Carter guessed, to control the block’s rate of descent down the ramp.

  The lieutenant glanced back at the truck, then said, “Make sure that the stone is very secure, gentlemen,” he said. “It is very ancient.”

  The workers kept their heads down, doing what they had to do as quickly and as wordlessly as they could. Even they, it struck Carter, looked like they couldn’t be finished with this assignment too soon.

  DiPalma ripped the last page of Carter’s documents free of the rest, folded it up, and slid it into his pocket. Then he took out another document of his own, written in Italian, with all kinds of official stamps all over it. “You must sign this here, and here,” DiPalma said, poking a finger at two spaces on the bottom.

  Carter, who couldn’t plow through all the Italian officialese fast enough, held it out toward Russo, who looked it over and said, “It is just the receipt for the transfer, and it must go back to the Academia in Rome.”

  While Carter dutifully signed, DiPalma nervously tapped his foot on the increasingly damp cement. Rainwater was splashing into the makeshift lab and trickling down the ramp from the back of the truck. When Carter had finished, DiPalma snatched the receipt back just as the winch was turned on; it came to life with a loud grinding groan, and DiPalma jumped to one side, away from the ramp.

  “Slowly,” he cried to the workers in the truck, “slowly!”

  The block was about the size of a couple of refrigerators, and the two workers stood on either side of it as the descent began. Afraid, Carter assumed, of getting injured, they kept their hands well clear of the block. Now Carter was able to see that it was mounted on a steel trolley, with wide steel wheels that rumbled angrily as they met the corrugated metal ramp.

  Russo, too, had moved off some distance, and was standing beside the desk. His eyes, though riveted on the stone, were wary. In Carter’s view, the lieutenant, Russo, and the workers all looked like a bunch of horses skittishly scenting smoke in the barn. As for himself, he couldn’t be more excited. The block was already halfway down the ramp.

  And then, so fast that his own reactions were no more than instinctive, it all happened—he heard one of the workers scream, “Watch out!” and he saw a length of the chain holding the trolley flash out of the truck bed like a lashing rattler. He jumped up as the wildly thrashing chain whipped under his feet, then spun toward the desk and Russo—who flattened himself on its surface as the steel links wrapped themselves around the legs of the desk, wrenching the whole thing several feet across the floor.

  “Dio!” DiPalma cried out.

  The block of stone, now unchained, trundled across the room, the wheels of its platform screeching on the cement floor. It turned itself halfway around before its sheer weight brought it to a grinding, suddenly silent halt.

  Only seconds had passed. Russo clung to the desk like a shipwrecked sailor to a raft, the lieutenant crossed himself and muttered something else in Italian, and one of the wo
rkers in the truck stumbled down the ramp. “The goddamned winch broke,” he cursed, cradling his right arm. “I think it broke my wrist!”

  Carter took a deep breath, then let it out. Stay calm, he told himself. The endless length of loose chain lay on the floor like a spent animal. The block of stone hadn’t been damaged in any way; in fact, it had come to rest right about where he’d wanted it, under the center of the lamps that Hank had rigged up.

  “God damn it,” the worker moaned, sitting down on the ramp and bending forward, protectively, over his injured arm. Carter went over to him and said, “There’s a hospital just a few blocks away. I’ll get a cab and take you over there.”

  “I know where the hospital is,” the worker said in disgust, “and I can get there myself.”

  “The fossil?” Russo said, timidly approaching. He was thinking, despite himself, of the dream he’d had in Rome.

  “It looks okay,” Carter said. “Thank God it didn’t fall over.”

  Russo walked in a wide circle around it, making a cautious inspection, remembering his nightmare of the loose cable whipping in the wind, snapping at the stone. Had it been, in actuality, a premonition?

  Lieutenant DiPalma bent to free the chain from the desk, and with the help of the uninjured worker tossed it back up into the rear of the truck. It landed with a muffled clank. Coming back to Carter, he declared, “The fossil is now in your possession, Professore.” He said it with obvious relief, as if he were making a sworn statement before an unseen court. He adjusted his cap on his head and put out his hand to shake. Carter took it, and as the lieutenant held it tight, he said, “Be careful.” His eyes flicked over to the brooding block of stone, then returned to Carter, full of meaning. “Accidents—you see?—can happen.”

  TWELVE

  Dawn was nearly breaking. Only moments before, the sky had been pitch black, and now it was a deep, dark indigo. Ezra walked swiftly, his eyes on the sidewalk, his arms crossed in front of his chest, holding his coat closed.

  He didn’t know where he was going; he didn’t care. He only knew that he had to be out of his rooms, out of that apartment, that he had to keep moving. He needed to be out among people, even the few who were scattered on the street at this ungodly hour, with buses lumbering by and off-duty cabs returning to their garages. He needed the activity, the absolutely mundane, everyday nature of it all, to surround him.

  Needed to forget what had happened that night.

  He’d been working. What else did he ever do? The scroll was coming together nicely, faster than he’d expected. The pieces were falling into place. He’d been at it for hours, losing track of the time, as always, and the CD player was switching to the next disc—Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. In the temporary silence, as his gloved fingers gently positioned a scrap of scroll between two others, the dense, elaborate script appeared, to his delight, to flow together, to make sense. But as he bent his head lower to examine his work, he heard, as clearly as he heard the ticking of his wristwatch, a voice whispering in his ear. The words were indecipherable, as if from an unknown tongue, but the meaning was somehow plain. It was yes . . . it was go on.

  And it sounded as if the speaker were leaning over his very shoulder.

  His head had jerked back and he’d whipped around in his seat. The back of his neck tingled, and his heart was pounding in his chest.

  But no one was there. There was no one in the room.

  But he had heard the voice. And he had felt a breath, a warm exhalation, on his face.

  The concerto began, playing softly.

  He got up from his chair; his legs felt a little weak. The curtains by the window, the double curtains he’d had Gertrude hang, were stirring—barely perceptibly, but stirring, nonetheless. With faltering steps he went toward them. Took hold of them. Drew them apart.

  He felt a slight draft, cool wind from outside blowing through the cracks in the French door frames. But the doors were locked, and the balcony was empty.

  He was alone in the room.

  He went back to the drafting table, looked down at his work. The surface of the table was half-covered now, with bits and pieces of the scroll that he had painstakingly restored, fitted together . . . and to some extent translated. It was indeed the Book of Angels. Also known to scholars as the Lost Book of Enoch. He’d been right about that. Dead right. It was Enoch’s account of his journey to Heaven, and of what he saw there. Of angels, burning bright around the throne of God; of others, fallen from favor. Of a coming war. And pestilence upon the earth. It was a dream, it was a prophecy . . . and it was his. No one had seen it, no one had read it, probably for thousands of years. Sometimes the sheer weight of that revelation felt like a hammer inside his head, threatening to crack open his skull.

  And maybe that’s what had happened tonight, he thought. Maybe a tiny, tiny fissure in his skull had opened up, just for a split second, and let the sound of that voice escape. Maybe it hadn’t come from outside at all; maybe it had come from inside his own head. The bicameral mind, once again in operation.

  A fire truck, siren wailing, barreled up First Avenue, with several cabs trailing in its wake. A limousine pulled up at the curb and a girl in a glittery party dress, carrying her shoes, got out. A line of pigeons walked in a perfect line across his path—like the Beatles on the cover of Abbey Road, he thought.

  The sky was dark blue, but the sun was coming up.

  Ezra kept going; when he had to stop at a corner to wait for the WALK light, he marched in place. He needed to feel the movement, to expend the energy. He needed to hear his feet pounding on the pavement, the cars whooshing by—anything, so long as it wasn’t that voice in his ear.

  A man in a flower shop was hosing down the sidewalk, and stopped to let Ezra pass.

  Outside a Japanese restaurant, one that Ezra had occasionally gone to, a wooden pallet of fresh fish was waiting on the sidewalk. As he went by, a large fish, its silver scales gleaming, seemed to fix him with its dead eye.

  He moved on quickly. The traffic was getting heavier by the minute. The sun was up, the sky clear. A Korean deli owner rolled up the heavy metal grates that covered his windows and door.

  Ezra kept walking; the farther he went, the better he felt. The sound of the voice diminished in his ear. It was good to be out, good to feel the morning air and the pulse of life around him. Maybe he should do this on a regular basis, he thought; maybe he should start taking long walks, getting some exercise.

  Before he knew it, he was at the corner of Eighty-ninth Street—his Uncle Maury’s street. He noticed it when he had to stop outside the old Vienna bakery where his uncle liked to buy his Danish. The bakery door was locked, but there were lights on inside, and he could see a woman sliding a tray of orange Halloween cookies into the display case.

  He knocked lightly on the glass in the door. Wouldn’t it be a nice surprise to show up at his uncle’s with some of his favorite treats?

  The woman came around the counter, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “You open?” Ezra said through the door. “Can I buy some things?”

  She leaned closer, then drew back. “We’re closed,” she said, turning away.

  Closed? She’d looked like she was reaching for the lock, to let him in. What time did they open? He stepped back to see if any business hours were posted. Then he caught his own reflection in the glass. A glassy-eyed man with a thick stubble of beard and messy hair, his overcoat gathered around him. One of his shoes, he now noticed, had even come unlaced.

  No wonder. He considered knocking again and trying to persuade her of his sanity, but she’d disappeared into the back—no doubt waiting for him to go away.

  He crossed the avenue, and walked past a row of decrepit brownstones. His uncle lived on the third floor, in front, and Ezra knew that he was a bad sleeper and an early riser. He stopped in front of the stoop, where someone had deposited an empty beer bottle, and looked up at his uncle’s windows. The lights, sure enough, were on.

 
In the foyer, Ezra buzzed, but knowing his uncle, he didn’t wait for him to respond; instead, he stepped back outside, knowing his uncle would simply stand at the window, looking down at the sidewalk to see who had bothered him.

  Ezra waved when he saw the curtain pulled back. His uncle, in a bathrobe, stared down at him, as if processing this unlikely information. Then he simply dropped the curtain, and by the time Ezra got back into the foyer, the door was unlocked and buzzing.

  He had his door open when Ezra came around the landing. “What the hell are you doing up here at this hour of the morning?” Then, as if something dire had occurred to him, he said, “Your father? He’s okay?”

  “For all I know, he’s fine. He’s still in Palm Beach, with Kimberly.”

  Ezra came into the kitchen, where the apartment began. It was a railroad flat, with the kitchen in back, then a bedroom, and then the living room—such as it was—in front.

  “You want some coffee?” his uncle asked, gesturing at the jar of Folger’s Coffee Crystals on the counter. “I was just making some.”

  “Yeah, that would be great. I stopped at the Vienna bakery to buy you some Danish, but they wouldn’t let me in.”

  Maury chuckled, said, “I can’t say as I blame ’em. You look like you just jumped out a window at Bellevue.”

  In a way, Ezra thought, that’s how he felt. That spectral voice—low, insinuating, strangely sinister—echoed again in his head.

  Maury took another coffee mug from the dish rack, spooned in some coffee crystals—“You like it strong?” he asked—and when Ezra nodded, spooned in some more. He poured in the boiling water, then led the way into the living room.